All Rise...

Editor's Note

The Charge

Opening Statement

1941, Occupied France. In the first years of the war, the sea wolves ruled
the Atlantic. Admiral Dönitz had issued a mandate: destroy all Allied
shipping in the sea. And the U-boat crews did just that, harassing the Allies
until the tide turned in 1943.

But U-96 will not make it even that far.

The Evidence

First of all, the name of this movie is not pronounced "boot." It
just drives me crazy when people do that. The word is pronounced in German just
as in English: "boat." U-96 is as much a character in this film as its
crew. It speaks in groans and struggles to hold itself together, just like any
one of the men inside it. But we never hear directly what it thinks about the
war going on around it. Only its crew can speak directly for it.

When we first meet the crew of U-96, they are drunk and horny, trying to
cover up the fact that they are entirely terrified of their next trip out to
sea. Their former captain offers a cynical toast, tweaking that "wonderful,
abstaining, womanless Führer" for his brilliant naval strategy, in
spite of being an amateur painter by trade. Ironically, this was the German Navy
at its peak, when, according to Michael Gannon in his book Black May, the
U-boat fleet may have been small, but still managed to inflict substantial
losses on Allied shipping. Unfortunately, the tide was beginning to turn, as the
Allies managed to successfully use their knowledge of the German Enigma cipher
to track the enemy's movements (shortages of men and machines on the German side
did not help either). By 1943, Germany's control of the seas was all but
over.

All this, of course, is happening offstage in Das Boot. This is war
from a decidedly claustrophobic perspective. We spend most of the film in close
quarters, only hearing about the outside world through garbled radio
transmissions. Other ships are usually seen through fog and rain and from a
distance. These men are isolated. Even in those brief respites in port, they
seem like outsiders. The war is going on without them, and all they can do is
plod along trying to accomplish what little they can without getting killed.

Few war films have tried to approach World War II from the Axis perspective,
without demonizing its subjects. Das Boot tends to avoid questions of
Nazi ideology, making it clear from the outset that the crew of U-96 have little
respect for their political leaders. They are merely out to despise and defeat
the enemy, if for no other reason than that is what you do to an enemy. By
keeping politics at a distance, the film allows its audience more room to
empathize with the experiences of these men. But our dim awareness that these
are soldiers for a doomed cause constantly reminds us that their ultimate fate,
regardless of how much we learn to rely on them while trapped with them in the
belly of this metal coffin, will not be pleasant.

Director Wolfgang Petersen's slick direction makes fine use of Steadicam
shots to slide through the central corridor of the submarine. The film has an
almost visceral texture: an ever-present haze from the diesel engines, the
sweat, the eerie noises. And the men are all pressed together (Petersen insisted
on shooting close in, without removing any walls on the set). Strict realism
governs the production design. We see the food storage, the cramped conditions
(one latrine for 50 men), the pitching and tossing during storms. The captain
quips, "Comfy place, huh? No mail, no phones. A well-ventilated boat.
Attractive wood paneling. Free home cooking. We're sitting in clover."

This is an action film about characters waiting for action. They surface
periodically, fire a few torpedoes, and then dive to avoid destroyers, cowering
in terror as the boat cracks apart from the depth charges. Then back to the
usual routine: V. D. checks, gossip, mildewed food, and interminable waiting.
And yet, somehow the film never seems boring. Petersen's focus on the
psychological pressures of life aboard a submarine—and the constant
awareness that their "Children's Crusade" (to quote the captain) is
ultimately doomed—drives the story forward with the momentum of a Greek
tragedy. There is enough character development to support what are generally
stock war movie types: the idealistic boy with a pregnant fiancée back
home, the cynical captain, the patriotic first officer. Carefully performances
and the sense of forced intimacy the boat creates give these types more
humanity. Little twists on war movie formulas help too. Instead of the requisite
anthem scene (where our heroes march off to war singing their fight song), the
crew sings "Long Way to Tipperary," mocking both their British enemy
and their Nazi leaders. These men are not ideologues; they are merely
soldiers.

By the second half of the film, the tension becomes unbearable. The film
threatens to topple into such grim cynicism that the audience might shrink away:
the harrowing image of bodies floating in the sea, the garish celebration for
the "respectable German heroes" still traumatized by their months at
sea, a suicide mission to Gibraltar, the boat's sinking and struggle to
resurface. But the characters garner enough sympathy, seen through the eyes of a
journalist (Herbert Grönemeyer) embedded with the crew, that we want to see
them through.

And their struggles go on and on. This is the 210-minute "director's
cut" of the film, which even at its extended length (compared to its 1981
theatrical release at 145 minutes) never drags. Of course, a real director's cut
of the film would run five hours and be formatted to 1.66:1, the original specs
for the television mini-series this was cut down from. But you have to move to
Germany if you want to watch it that way.

Sony has packaged Das Boot as part of its Superbit line. Yes, the
picture looks glorious, nearly new and only suffering from slight grain and
fading due to age. Yes, the sound is great, as immersive as a submarine film
ought to be. Superbit titles (which are all male-oriented, designed for boys who
like techie toys) remind me of those old Mobile Fidelity gold-plated compact
discs back in the 1980s. They were expensive and marketed to people who owned
high-end equipment. The promotional copy always said that the gold plating made
the discs sound better, but frankly, unless you had amazingly expensive
equipment and your own acoustically ideal listening room, you really could not
tell much of a difference. And was the higher quality of sound due to the gold
plating, or the fact that the company sank a bunch of money into sonic
restoration?

Does Das Boot look better because Sony trumped up some stuff about
increasing bitrate (and regular DVD Verdict readers know our suspicions about
that) or is it because the print has been digitally remastered and
anamorphically enhanced? Gee, I'm only a film scholar with a PhD in English, so
don't ask me about technical stuff. The film just looks really nice on my basic
level equipment, and it will on yours too.

Closing Statement

Every submarine film made since 1981 copies from Das Boot. Its tone
may be almost unrelentingly serious and cynical, like an existential coffin ride
to the bottom of the sea, but it maintains a hypnotic power for its formidable
running time. This is one instance where the remastering efforts of Superbit are
in the service of a title that actually deserves quality treatment (unlike some
of the titles in this line). Of course, the film could also use some nice
extras, like the commentary track on the prior DVD release. But on its own, the
film says everything it needs to say about the cruelties of war.

The Verdict

Sony is sent out to sea for continuing to jack up the price point on films
that should have been given this sort of loving treatment to begin with.
Wolfgang Petersen and company are granted shore leave.